


stay where you are

by thecellabration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, F/F, Post-Episode: s15e12 Galaxy Brain, author tries to describe driving through the US; has clearly never been to the US
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29925351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecellabration/pseuds/thecellabration
Summary: So, the lead in Yosemite was a fucking bust, not that Claire should be surprised.
Relationships: Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak
Kudos: 7





	stay where you are

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sure this reunion has been written a bunch of times already, i haven't checked yet because i didn't want it to influence my own writing. i'm going to check now! i need all the kaia/claire content i can get
> 
> title is technically a sleater-kinney song but it's nondescript enough that it doesn't really matter. the only reason i bring it up is bc i want to say that since claire canonically listens to the pretty reckless, which i don't anymore but i used to, i'm allowed to dump the rest of my taste in music on her <3
> 
> and then also shout out to josi for giving me some feedback on a couple of things and being generally encouraging and great always. i named the diner after u!

So, the lead in Yosemite was a fucking bust, not that Claire should be surprised. Most every lead she goes after now turns out to be nothing. It’s been two years, and it’s probably what Jody would refer to as a cold case, if she wasn’t too scared of what Claire would do if she didn’t keep up a steady stream of encouragements and ”maybe the next one will go better”s. 

What Claire would do is _be just fine_ , because she is just fine now, even when she already knows perfectly well that it’s futile. What she’s running on isn’t any kind of hope. She’s long past the days of believing that something good will happen just because a parent says so—not that Jody really is her parent, she’s long past that too, she’s just-- whatever. Point is, Claire would manage. She manages. She’d just also like to kill what killed Kaia, that’s all.

She gets back to her motel room just to pack up. Throws everything in her duffel before she remembers to dig her journal out. Sitting down at the rickety motel room table, she flips to a new page and writes _April 13th 2020, Yosemite, California. Nothing._ , then pauses with her pen above the paper for a moment. She thinks maybe she should write more, or something else, only because most entries about this specific hunt don’t get more than the date and the location, and it’s getting redundant. There’s nothing else of import to say, though. And it’s not like she’d write about her _feelings_. It’s not that kind of journal, she’s not that kind of person.

Instead, she shuts the book, drops it back in her bag along with the pen, which will inevitably roll into a corner and then underneath a bunch of other shit she will have to rifle through next time she needs it. Shame there are no easy solutions for that one. She zips her duffle up, checks out, and gets in her car. Her phone automatically connects to the bluetooth, which she splurged on when she got tired of pirating and burning CDs, sometime after her third month of driving back and forth across the States. Putting Sleater-Kinney on shuffle and her car in reverse out of the parking space, the plan is to get somewhere with actually reliable cell service, and possibly even some food.

She ends up in El Portal after about half an hour’s drive, a place along CA-140 that only somewhat checks off the points on her list, but it’s good enough. She buys a couple of protein bars and a can of Pringles at a tiny gas station and eats in the parking lot, sitting sideways in the driver’s seat with the door open, feeling the light wind through the rips in her jeans, music still blasting from her car stereo because there’s barely anyone else around anyway.

With her phone off airplane mode, which she’d turned on because there was no point in just staring at the NO SIGNAL in the corner anyway, several texts roll in. One from Castiel, who says he just wants to check in. Another from Alex, wondering if she can borrow a shirt Claire had left at home. A couple from Jody, saying she’s hoping Claire is doing well and to let her know when she can be reached again. Claire ignores the first messages for now, and sends a text to Jody with the hand she’s not using to put food in her mouth.

_back in civilization-ish_ , she writes, _got bars again at least_. She doesn’t say anything about how the lead fell through. Jody probably won’t ask, either. She knows by now that no news means bad news, and that bad news means Claire won’t talk about it.

Jody texts back immediately. _Ok, drive safe. Always welcome back home if you want_ , and a smiley face emoji that no one under the age of 35 uses unironically, which is the regular response.

Maybe this time, though, Claire should take her up on the offer. It’s been a while since she was last in Sioux Falls. It would be nice to have a home-cooked meal, sleep in an actually comfortable bed, spend time with some familiar faces even if those faces belong to Alex and Patience. She probably wouldn’t even have to deal too much with the looks they tend to give her, like she’s going to break again. It’s been two years, and Claire is fine now.

She replies, _yeah i might i’ll call u later_ , before she overthinks it, then she brushes the crumbs off her lap and drives back the way she came to get on the 120 instead. She starts working on tapping Sioux Falls into her GPS app every time she can glance off the road, but that doesn’t mean she has to go to Sioux Falls. She can just head in that direction, stop and check for hunts along the way, see what happens. It’s a several days’ drive, anyway, even if she doesn’t drag it out with more cases. She’ll have plenty of time to change her mind more than once. She just doesn’t have anything else to get to right now, and it’s always nice to have a direction to go in while she figures it out.

She cranks the music up louder, drowning out the sound of the engine and tires on asphalt, and relaxes in her seat. It doesn’t really hit that hard anymore, when a lead turns up nothing. There’s some disappointment—because every time she leaves to check something out, without fail, she ends up thinking maybe this time it will be _it_. Inevitably, it never is, and it’s gotten easier to deal with. Easy enough that she can deal with it herself. If she does head home now, it’s not for comfort. She doesn’t need comfort. She’s just been on the road for a while.

She keeps going for a few more hours, until the sun has dropped close to the horizon, and then she starts scanning the signs for a roadside motel or an exit that will take her to one. She’s still working on it when her phone vibrates in the seat next to her, and she picks it up without taking her eyes off the road, holds it up above the steering wheel so that she can see the screen. It’s a text from Jody. _Are you driving?_ it says.

Jody doesn’t like it when Claire talks on the phone while driving. If she wants something—like to check on how Claire is doing, or to pass on details about a case—she texts, and then Claire can quickly skim what it’s about and get to it when she’s able to. If Jody wants something and it’s important and she needs to call, she asks first.

Claire pulls over and turns on the hazard lights without thinking about it more than the fact that she’s parked terribly at the side of the road at dusk. She texts back a _no_ and nothing else, already running through worst case scenarios in her head. Someone’s hurt. Patience has had a bad vision. Someone’s _dead_.

Her phone rings in her hand, and she swipes to answer without looking.

”Yeah,” she says, missing the inflection that would make it a question.

Jody says, ”Claire,” and Claire can’t decipher her tone. Urgent, maybe. It’s not her bad news voice but Claire doesn’t know what else it could be.

”What?”

”I have someone here who would very much like to talk to you,” Jody says, and now Claire realizes it might be a smile she’s hearing. That Jody’s excited.

Confused, Claire says, ”...Okay?” and then she hears the muffled sound of a phone exchanging hands, and then.

”Hi, Claire.”

Claire’s first thought is that she’s making it up, that she’s misheard or that she’s simply just wrong, or maybe that she’s actually asleep and dreaming—that she’s in a shitty motel bed or the backseat of her car and her subconscious is doing this to her. But it feels too real to be a dream. And she doesn’t remember Kaia’s voice anymore, not well enough to imagine it this clear.

“Kaia?” she manages to say, a question and a confirmation and something close to a sob all at once.

Kaia says, “Yes,” and she sounds so relieved and happy, Claire couldn’t stop the smile spreading on her lips even if she wanted to.

She has a million questions, none of them fitting for a phone call from her car on the side of a mostly deserted stretch of highway, so she settles on, “Where are you?”

“Kansas,” Kaia replies. “We’re just about to leave Kansas.”

Shit. Claire is so many fucking hours away from Kansas. There’s a voice in the background and another dull thud, and then Jody’s back and saying, “You’re on speaker now, Claire, where are you?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Claire says. There aren’t any signs around here to specify her exact location, and she doesn’t think she’s capable of pulling her phone away from her ear for long enough to check the map. She does know, “I’m not even in Nevada yet. _Shit_ , it’s so far, Jody,” and now the elation she was feeling is giving way to anxiety, a knot starting to form in her stomach.

“It’s okay,” Jody says, all calm. “We’re going to be heading back to Sioux Falls, and you can come home, and we’ll be there.”

Claire takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, I was already on my way there anyway,” she tells them.

“It’s a plan, then,” Jody declares, then adds, “Drive _carefully_. Promise me you’ll stop to sleep and eat. You’re not in a rush, Kaia is not going anywhere.”

“Promise,” Claire says quickly, half-needing this call to end now so that she can get back on the road.

“Alright,” Jody says. “Call or text if you need anything.”

“I will. And Kaia,” she adds, instantly feeling better from just acknowledging that she’s _there_ now, that Claire can talk to her. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Kaia says, sounding like she feels the same.

They hang up after Claire has promised Jody once again that she’ll take it easy, and then she wipes the tears from her eyes with shaking hands and shifts her car back into gear. She drives through the night—driver's side window rolled down a little and music on high to keep her awake, not that she’d even be capable of sleeping right now anyway—but stops at a diner for breakfast in the morning. She stops again early in the afternoon for more food and a nap in the car, and another time for coffee at a gas station, and then it’s late evening, almost night, and she’s pulling up outside Jody’s house.

She cuts the engine, and then she stills. Two years, and all the ways she’d fantasized about this ending, this really wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t dared.

On legs she wouldn’t admit are slightly unsteady, from nervosity and from driving for over a day straight, she walks up the path to the door. Knocks twice but lets herself in, and there she is. Everyone comes out to the hallway to greet Claire—Jody and Alex and Patience—but she can’t look away from Kaia.

She looks the same. Her hair is longer, Claire thinks, but nothing else has changed. It’s undeniably her, and she smiles a little, shyly, and says, “Hi.”

Claire automatically puts a hand over her mouth, not sure what sound would escape right now if she didn’t. When she moves next, it’s to pull Kaia into a hug. Kaia goes easily, wraps her arms around Claire while Claire tries her best not to cry, squeezes her eyes shut and holds on. 

Patience makes tea for everyone, too late for coffee, and they all settle down at the dining room table. It’s clear that Kaia and Jody explaining what happened is all for Claire’s benefit, that Alex and Patience have already heard the story, but they both stay anyway, in silent support.

Kaia was alive, the whole time. She was alive when they left her in the Bad Place, and they left her in the Bad Place for _two years_. Claire could have—should have—done more, and that’s her main take-away, what she’ll be beating herself up over once she’s settled down. Once she’s less exhausted, less relieved, when she feels less like she’s floating. For now, she’s just happy. She lets herself be.

There’s more to talk about, afterwards, but Claire would prefer to do it away from any prying foster families. Kaia follows her back to the car, sits in the passenger seat while Claire gets in on the other side, but they stay in the driveway for now. And then it’s quiet. Claire can’t really tell if it’s a good kind of quiet.

The time she’d had with Kaia hadn’t been enough to learn anything beyond the fact that nothing else will ever feel like this. The years apart have only cemented that, for Claire. But they don’t really know each other. Kaia looks down at her hands, picks at a fingernail, and Claire doesn’t know what that _means_. If she’s nervous, if this is even where she wants to be, if Claire can tell her what she thinks she needs to say.

While she’s trying to figure that out, Kaia is the one who breaks the silence. Says, “God, I’m tired.”

Claire laughs a little. “Yeah, I’ve slept, like, an hour in two days.”

Kaia looks up at that, eyebrows furrowed. “How long was the drive here?”

“Like...” Claire makes a face as she tries to calculate it in her head. “24 hours after you called, I think. I stopped for a nap and for food a couple times,” and then she takes a slight risk by saying, “Wasn’t like I was going to check into a motel when I could be here.”

“Yeah,” Kaia agrees with another small smile. Then she reaches across the console to the hand Claire’s got resting on her thigh. Claire turns her palm up, Kaia carefully laces their fingers together. Absolutely no one in the car blushes—Claire definitely doesn’t, she’s sure. She ducks her head, anyway, just in case.

Running her thumb over Kaia’s, Claire keeps her eyes on their hands in her lap as she says, softly, “I am really glad you’re back.”

Kaia suddenly shifts in her seat without letting go, uses her other hand to tilt Claire’s face up—and then she’s right there, pressing their lips together.

Time stands still, or more like doesn’t matter. Stretches out like an empty highway. Claire’s right arm is pinned awkwardly against the seat behind her, and it’s starting to fall asleep, but Kaia opens her mouth and Claire doesn’t care about anything but that. They kiss slowly, no urgency anymore now that they’re finally here, and when they do break apart it’s only by inches. Then Kaia drops her head to Claire’s shoulder, and Claire runs her free hand through Kaia’s hair, and together they breathe.

”I thought I’d never see you again,” Kaia whispers into the silence, after several minutes have passed just like this. Claire’s heart aches in her chest.

”Me neither,” she replies, just as quiet. The _I thought you were dead_ goes unsaid. They both already know it, anyway. They both remember exactly what they last saw of each other.

Finally, Claire can no longer ignore the discomfort of sitting like this in the front seat of a car. She straightens up a little, asks, “Hey, wanna go somewhere? There’s a diner in town that should still be open,” because she doesn’t feel ready to go back inside yet either.

“Sure,” Kaia says. They disentangle completely for as long as it takes Claire to turn the ignition and shift into drive, and then Claire is reaching out for Kaia’s hand again. Kaia grips her tight.

Claire texts Jody while they walk inside, _at josie’s_ , just to make sure she won’t worry. She must have heard them drive away. They sit down across from each other at a booth, and by the time they’ve ordered milkshakes and a basket of fries to share, Claire’s phone buzzes in her pocket. All Jody wrote back was _Love you_.

They get their food, and then Claire’s not sure what to do. She smalltalks while they eat, complains about a car that had tailgated her for several miles earlier, about something Alex had said last time Claire was home, talks in public-appropriate words about a weird vampire case she’d worked a few months ago.

Kaia doesn’t contribute much—probably not a lot of smalltalk worthy experiences in the Bad Place, Claire thinks guiltily—but she comments on her milkshake being good, and listens intently while Claire talks, nods and laughs at the right places. Then, suddenly, when there’s a lull in the conversation, she opens her mouth and says, ”How did the hunt go?”

”Hunt?” Claire asks.

Kaia frowns a little. ”Jody said you were on a hunt, when I came back.”

”Oh.” Claire pauses. ”Uh, yeah, I was actually following up on a lead. On, uh, you. What happened to you.”

”Really?”

”It didn’t turn out to be anything, but yeah.”

Kaia seems to contemplate that for a moment, before she quietly asks, “Did you do that a lot?”

“Kinda,” Claire admits. “I mean, there was never really a lot to go on. But I tried. If I’d known you were alive I would have tried harder.”

“But you didn’t know,” Kaia says. When Claire doesn’t reply, she adds, out-of-nowhere enough that it catches Claire off guard, “I don’t blame you.”

It stirs something up in Claire that she’s been doing her best not to think about. It’s effectively what Jody’s been saying the whole time, more than a few times, especially in the beginning. _It wasn’t your fault_. But that was just for Claire’s sake, just like what Kaia is doing now. It’s not the truth. Claire might have been pushing it down, but she never forgot, and it’s back at the surface. She says, “It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for me.”

The first few months, she couldn’t sleep without nightmares. Jody wanted to get her help, but it’s not like you can tell a therapist you watched the girl you’re in love with get killed by a spear that was aimed at you, only to have to leave her body in an alternate universe. Loss and grief and powerlessness were far from new to Claire, but this was a different kind of guilt.

“No,” Kaia disagrees, shaking her head minutely. “I saved you, I chose to save you. And I’m so glad I did.”

Claire has to look away. Two years ago she would have said she wishes she hadn’t. “I know,” she allows, instead. She stares out the window, unseeingly, at the mostly empty parking lot outside. Then she makes herself perk up, look back at Kaia. “Just wish things had gone differently,” she says, voice as light as she can make it.

“Yeah. But we’re both okay,” Kaia replies.

Not true, either, Claire would bet. _She’s_ okay—for her it’s been years since the worst of it. For Kaia it’s only been a day since she got out. Claire’s not sure if she can bring that up, though. How to ask about it.

Kaia looks down, studies her straw as she rolls it between her thumb and forefinger. Before Claire can make up her mind on what to say, Kaia says, “I’ll tell you about it,” like she read Claire’s mind. Maybe she’d seen it on her face. “Not right now, but I will one day.” She looks up again, smiles. “For now, I really just am happy I’m with you.”

Claire finds herself smiling back. “Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

They finish their food, Claire asks the waitress for the check, and as soon as they’re back in the car Kaia can’t stop yawning. She rests her head on Claire’s shoulder the whole drive back, their hands clasped just like before.

It’s past midnight when they get home, but everyone is still awake and lounging in front of the TV. Claire suggests Kaia go get ready for bed, while she walks into the living room. She heads straight for where Jody’s sitting on the couch and leans down to hug her tight. “Thank you,” she whispers, quiet enough that Alex or Patience won’t hear.

When she lets go, Jody tucks a strand of hair behind Claire’s ear. “Of course,” she whispers back, just as quiet.

Claire takes a second to compose herself, and then she announces, “Goodnight, we’re going to sleep,” to the whole room.

”In the same bed?” Alex says.

Claire throws her a look. ”I’m 22, dude.”

Patience snorts a laugh and Jody only rolls her eyes, but they all tell her goodnight before she leaves again.

She grabs her duffel from where she’d dropped it in the hallway when she got back, and when she gets to her bedroom Kaia is already curled up underneath the covers. It’s what Claire had meant for her to do, but she realizes she forgot to tell her that, never told her where to go. It hits her that this must have been where Kaia slept last night, too.

Claire gets ready quickly, washes off her makeup and brushes her teeth, changes into sweatpants and a different t-shirt, and then she crawls into the bed too. Kaia immediately shifts closer, and Claire kisses her softly, both of them too exhausted for anything more. It’s sweet, and like they have all the time in the world. They do, Claire thinks. This time, they really do.

She’s been making a valiant effort at staying awake this long, but now she’s in her own bed, and she’s warm, and Kaia’s arms are around her. She’s pretty sure she’ll fall asleep the second she closes her eyes, and she’s about to, when she remembers something important.

She turns, about to get up again, and Kaia asks, ”What?” already sounding half-asleep.

”Just thought of something,” Claire says, and gets out of bed. She doesn’t turn on the ceiling lights, instead blindly rummages through her duffel, taking out her journal and finding her pen somehow in the middle of some dirty laundry. She does turn on her desk lamp when she sits down in the chair, opening up the nearly empty page from last time. She draws a crooked line to separate the entries, and underneath it she writes, _April 15th 2020, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Kaia is home._


End file.
